Help with YAML, hashes, and design.

rubyonrails-talk
1

HI,

How do I convert a string value to a variable name? To get the value of the variable. Is the following technique good design?

I have an app that needs to create urls in a bunch of different formats. Below is a simplified example.

http://www.site1.com?firstname=Wayne&lastname=Gretzky http://www.site2.com?fname=Wayne&lname=Gretzky

In my code, I've have variables first_name and last_name. So I put the mappings into a YAML file.

2

You can convert string to a Symbol and vice-versa. I don't think you can convert a string value to a variable name. Have you tried using string interpolation to solve your problem?

3

I was overcomplicating things before. Here is all I had to do:

eval(value).to_s